GOOGLE: World's Most Valuable Brand

In a strong blow to Microsoft, UK based Millward Brown recently announced in their BRANDZ SURVEY that Google is the most valuable brand in the world; the Google name being worth $66.4 Billion, which is about 77% more than it's estimated value in 2006. Within one year, Google has surpassed long established brands like Microsoft, Coca-Cola,Walmart and General Electric.

While this may come as surprise to many, I don't really think it warrants one. I mean, c'mon, think about it--You BLOG with Google, you SCRAP with Google, you TAG with Google, you TALK with Google, you SHARE with Google, you TRANSLATE with Google, you gMAIL with Google and most importantly..you SEARCH with Google and there are many more. Three cheers to Google team, keep up the good work guys:).

Coming back to the Millward Brown rankings; many other big names have joined Microsoft in the losers section viz. IBM(-7%,$33.6Bn), Cisco(-10%,$18.8Bn), Intel(-26%,$18.7Bn), Dell(-24%,$18.9Bn) andYahoo(-6%,$13.2Bn). The winners include Nokia(+19%,$31.7Bn), Hewlett-Packard(+27%,$25Bn), Apple(+55%,$24.8Bn) and Sony(+22%,$11.4Bn). Microsoft lost about 11% of its value last year and now stands at $55Bn; it also lost the #2 spot to General Electric. At number 4 stands a company called China Mobile, valued at $41.2Bn, while Nokia languishes at #12????...pheww!! times really have changed.

Internet 2: Speed Demon!!

While most home users living in India tend to be satisfied with the "broadband" speeds of 256Kbps(that too shared), upto 2Mbps in case of BSNL lines, our friends in Japan and other developed countries seem to have different needs altogether.During my 1 year stay in London I had experienced a 10Mbps speeds on our University LAN/T1 connection and about 8Mbps(BT Broadband) when I moved into a separate apartment with one of my friends. Home users in Korea and Japan have 80Mbps connections!!! While TRAI feels proud of classifying 256Kbps as broadband...and our service providers are busy robbing the poor customers with silly data limits("plans starting at 250 with a 200MB data limit", can you friggin believe that???only the downloading of virus definitions, windows updates and OS elements as DirectX,.NET FRAMEWORK can eat it up in ONE SITTING, broadband revolution my ass!!) and crappy bandwidths, the people at the University of Tokyo have given us something more to drool over.

The Internet 2 consortium just announced that scientists working at the University Of Tokyo slammed gigabytes of information on an around-the-world path at more than 9 Gigabits!!! per second....phew!!!! This was done in early December and January.

The path started in Tokyo and stretched 20,000 miles going through Chicago, Amsterdam, Seattle and then back to Tokyo. The initial try on December 30th achieved speeds of 7.67 gigabits per second. After some tuning, the scientists reached 9.08 Gbps on New Year’s Eve.The theoretical limit of the Internet 2 is 10 Gbps on a single link.

Year Zero--Nine Inch Nails

A friend of mine, an NIN follower and a Trent Reznor fanatic, recently asked me to put up a review for this album. Before I begin, I'll be honest with you and tell you that I've never really warmed upto NIN's music, or any sort of Industrial music for that matter, save for some early works of Fear Factory. I do, as many of you would, enjoy a couple of their songs like 'closer' and 'hurt' though. In fact, I have never listened to any NIN album through and through--they BORE me quite frankly. Well...that has changed now....and as per the request of my friend, I have finally heard an NIN album in its entirety...much to my dismay though...lol...just kiddin...read on!!
I don't know much about NIN's history, except for the fact that 'The Downward Spiral' is considered as a seminal release in Industrial Music; so I won't/can't compare Year Zero to their earlier works or even The Downward Spiral. So what I'll do is give you an unbiased(I'll try my best) opinion on the album's music. Did I just say music???Apparently, it's not music--now before you go judging me on how I also listen to death/grind and talk about "music", please have patience..and read further. If you(except NIN followers) are to perceive this as a piece of music, then you're in for a big big disappointment, coz it's not. What it should be seen as is a piece of art, a piece of art coming straight from the heart of an artist; his angst, his depressions, the misery. I, however, had a tough time putting the pieces together to find the hidden art:). It's very noisy with all sorts of sounds haphazardly thrown in throughout the album--now for some, this may be innovation. Of course, innnovation it is, but then again --what the hell were Pink Floyd doing on The Dark Side Of The Moon?? Didn't all the clicking watches, the tinkering coins, the laughing men and women seem to complement the music there??The answer is a resounding YES. But with Year Zero--it's a no, with a capital n and capital o. That's not to say that the entire album is rubbish though; it does have it's fair share of radio friendly tunes and then some interesting ones. There's Survivalism which has a very catchy chorus, it gets into your head actually; Capital G has a catchy beat and a very pumped up chorus; Meet Your Master has some groovy bass lines and Trent delivers some really great vocals on In This Twilight.
Anyway, the fact is that it's a concept album--something to do with the year 2022 when the world ends or something, and it has some political lyrics(I'm sorry I didn;t go deep into them). As I've said before, I listen to music to listen to music. The message, the social impact, the blah blah can go to hell, if I wanted some intellectual stimulation I'd sit down and have a political debate with my wife or friends:). So, as always, I was not very impressed with what NIN have to offer, some of the songs could get a replay once in a blue moon though; but then they'll be lost in oblivion for me for sure. As for die hard NIN fans, I'm not sure--but I'll still say that you'll most probably love it. And the goth inspired 15 year kids will also add to the 'star power' of Mr. Reznor. To sum it up, if you're one of those who find what goes around in the making of an album, the experiences(read pretensions) of the artists, the self proclaimed junkie/goth status more stimulating than the music itself then you'll love it(Disclaimer: I'm not judging you) coz as they say..to each his own. As for me, I find this a poser effort. And Trent, you're no Roger Waters and never will be.Oh! and stop the silly goth/junkie act and go find a dustbin to live...lol...I just couldn't help myself...sorry:)

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Rating: 6.0/10

HITACHI Goes TERABYTE!!!!

I remember the moment when we had our first PC installed at home. It was a PIII 650 Mhz machine with an HD capacity of 4.7 GB;I was thrilled to my bones. Those were the times when all we would save on the PC were word documents, wallpapers!!!! and sometimes games which required a maximum of about 150 MB, a la Quake or Unreal. When Seagate announced the first 20GB hard disk, almost everybody laughed"who would ever need so much of space?" It seems that within less than a decade's time people's needs have grown a 100 fold!!! Up untill now Seagate was again the innovator with it's 750GB line of hard drives; and now Hitachi has come up with a 'first' in it's Deskstar 7K1000 line of hard drives with a whopping 1 Terabyte of capacity.

Apart from the massive storage, the drive carries a huge 32MB of cache memory,runs at a fair 7200 RPM and also uses PMR(Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) technology; first time for Hitachi in the 3.5' segment. The drive benchmarks well against similar hard drives in the market and clearly outperforms the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB. For the detailed benchmarking results of this drive please visit here.

UNSUNG CLASSIC: Heartwork--Carcass

Carcass, along with Napalm Death are reponsible for giving the world what we call grind/grindcore/ or death-grind or whatever you wish to call it. Now that's that, but there's more to Carcass....read on!! When we talk of revolutionary/influential bands in metal, bands that have released albums that started/defined or epitomized a particular genre, names like Black Sabbath, Venom, Metallica, Death, Slayer,Queensryche,KoRN, Helloween,Iron Maiden,Dream Theater come to mind. How many can boast of doing this more than once in their careers?? Maybe Metallica....so this might come as a surprise to you that Carcass, in fact, have done so twice in their short career of 5 albums.With their debut album, they invented grind and with Heartwork they invented Melodic Death Metal. Yes!! you read that right, not At The Gates, not In Flames, not Dark Tranquillity, but it was 1993 when Carcass released this gem of their's that MDM was born!!Coming on to the music--the album has elements of traditional death metal, grind,groove and classic hard rock!!!!!Yes, yes, yes, listen to all the solos, they might very well have been on all the great Kiss,Motley Crue,Whitesnake,Poison songs. The music is beautiful from start to finish...tracks are mostly mid to fast paced....original/unique riffs(for it's time) and blistering yet melodious solos. I won't get into the deep track by track review as each song here is great, with the possible exception of No Love Lost, which just seems out of place in this otherwise perfect album. Highlights include the title track, This Mortal Coil, Buried Dreams, Arbeit Macht Fleisch, Doctrinal Expletives and the masterful Death Certificate,which might very well be the best death metal song ever!!! Get your hands on this revolutionary album now, you won't be disappointed.

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Rating: 9.5/10

UNSUNG CLASSIC: The Jester Race--In Flames

In Flames are the pioneers of a style known as Melodic Death Metal along with the likes of Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates etc. This is the first full length album from these lords of Gothenburg. If it wasn't for Metallica's Black album and Megadeth's Rust In Peace, I would go as far as to say that this is perhaps the best metal album of the nineties!!! Harmonising guitars..pulverizing riffs...insane drumming..immaculate solos. Never has the amalgamation of so many different types of music sounded so good. For the death metal fan there are the blast beats and the cookie monster vocals....for the classic hard rock listener there are sweet solos and melodious rhythms...for the power metal fan there are harmonising guitars played at breakneck speed.It has everything for everybody. Listen to the opener Moonshield and you'll know what I mean...it starts off with a folksy acoustic intro and then goes on to bombard the listener with progressive/death/melodious bliss. Straight up rockers like Artifacts of the Black Rain,Lord Hypnos and Dead Eternity will provide instant gratification to any riff-monger out there. The Jester's Dance is an instrumental which could have very well been on Master of Puppets!! Even after all this, if you thought they are just another band who just know how to riff..listen to the solo on December Flower. It's soooo emotionally melodious you'll feel like crying(and that says a lot for a death metal band..so what if it's melodious death metal)..definitely one of the top 5 metal solos ever..in my opinion. The Jester Race might very well be the greatest metal album not to reach the platinum status. So do yourself a favor and get it now. Even if you don't like the growling death metal vocals..listen to it for the sheer beauty of the instruments(it's an acquired taste actually and might grow on you)

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Rating: 10/10

Unsung Metal Classics

When people talk about rock/metal music and the classic albums that these genres have produced, the names Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden,Judas priest, Guns n' Roses, AC/DC, Slayer, Megadeth come to mind.....don't they? Black Sabbath gave the world what we call 'heavy metal'..the song Iron Man was the first ever 'metal song'. Iron Maiden perfected and epitomized what we know as NWOBHM or New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Judas Priest walked this path aongside Iron Maiden and were among the first bands of NWOBHM. AC/DC gave the world rock n' roll metal, Back In Black remains the highest selling rock/metal album to date. Gn'R gave metal its mass appeal again in late eighties when it was supposed to be dying. Metallica are the mighty lords of thrash metal and arguably the most important band in metal history. Megadeth; contemporaries and an offshoot of Metallica have also given the metal world many a masterpieces. Slayer's Reign In Blood is responsible for whatever we hear in extreme music today.

Master Of Puppets, Reign In Blood, Rust In Peace, Number Of The Beast, Back in Black etc etc have been reviewed and hailed soooooooooo many times. What I'm gonna do in the next few posts is review a not so well known album which I deem to be a classic...let's see where that goes:)

Introduction Of Links

Since i have been on a metal reviews/lists frenzy..I thought it would be good to give you guys some links from where you can download and preview some good metal music you havent listened to. Please do not keep any of the music you download from these sites or the links provided there for more than 24 hrs. If you like the music..buy it! I've put up links for 4 good blogs...and will add more in the future. Hope you guys enjoy the music. If anybody has any problems with these links being on the blog...contact me..and they'll be removed. Cheers